BPL Season 2015/2016: Arsenal 0 – 0 Liverpool

Review by a Malaysian Gooner

How I wish I didn’t stay up for this. It’s freakin’ 5AM on a Tuesday now and all we got was a draw and a poor performance in overall. Despite the rain, the players started with high tempo after Liverpool’s Coutinho hit the bar with his shot. We closing down hard, played with intensity and was passing brilliantly. Captain of the day, Santi Cazorla, made the greatest, tightest through-pass to Aaron Ramsey who made the run into the left side of the box and put the ball into the net nicely but the fucking linesman wrongfully waved offline. Simon Bennett is his name, remember this lineman’s name if we lost the league or a spot because of his error today. He’s done it before a couple of years ago to Liverpool as well when Suarez’s goal was disallowed by his trigger-happy flag.
Then it all went to shit. No more chances made in the first half and our sloppiness just went to another level, losing the ball easily or just making stupid lazy passes that gifted wide open counter-attack opportunities to the opposing team. We were without both our main central defenders Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny, presumably unfit or injured. The young Calum Chambers and Gabriel had to share their first appearance of the season out of the sudden, and boy, they were shaky. Gabriel wasn’t bad, made some vital challenges and blocks, and his strong passion is noticeable. Chambers, on the other hand, caused problems with his horrendous passing. Liverpool were patient and quite discipline, and we rewarded them with great chances. They finish the half with 8 to 9 shots, if I’m not mistaken, and should’ve scored a few.

Thankfully, Petr Cech decided to be world class today and the hardworking Francis Coquelin was precise and courageous tackles, more key ones being against Benteke when he’s clear inside the box when Chambers is no where to be seen. Cech has redeemed himself by making a total of 8 saves and 2 of them were heroically spectacular. Bellerin’s mistake forced Cech to make an unbelievable save when Benteke was tapping in the ball almost right beside him. Cech also got a finger to Coutinho’s curving shot which was going in. Now this is the reason why we signed Cech and he’s finally showing his worth.

We obviously had no width and Olivier Giroud, the handsome-man, was getting no service, but le boss Arsene Wenger stuck with the same players at the start of the second half. It almost paid off when Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Ramsey and Cazorla began clicking well but Giroud missed all of the chances created. Alexis, who was also quite ineffective today, hit the post once after a brilliant one-pass football play between these theme. Suddenly it was Liverpool’s goalkeeper Mignolet who’s called to action, making some great saves against us. Theo Walcott came out to replace Giroud, and as expected, nothing happened. Ramsey was perhaps the best player on offence today but his goal wasn’t counted and his great plays weren’t scored. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came in for Coquelin with only 10 minutes left and immediately he made an impact with his pace and willingness to shoot but Liverpool hanged on. Wenger should’ve put in Ox from the beginning of second half.

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Liverpool didn’t come to the Emirates Stadium today to win. That much is obvious. Mignolet was time-wasting from very beginning and got cautioned until he was yellow-carded. We were robbed by the linesman. We performed poorly after that and bounced back in the final third of the match but nobody was finishing. It’s obvious we need a world class striker. But it ain’t going to be Karim Benzema as he, on Twitter, just called everyone clowns for saying that he’s leaving Real Madrid. Are we on the way to yet another FA Cup-hunting season? We will know by next Tuesday when the transfer window closes.